When the Ocean Bleeds into the Sky
by mangacrack
Summary: Set after the end of 5x04, the End. What happened to Sam after Lucifer was done burning the world.


It's hurting again.

My toes, my teeth and my skin… everything is hurting. My entire body screams in protest; every step I take is one too much, and I want nothing more, but rest. Sweet rest, but sleep evades me - naturally since I see the world burning in front of my eyes. Bright red flames dance freely over places that were once filled with grass and flowers. Now, I smell only charred flesh with a mix of sulphur. Hell has opened and pulled the world down into its pit. There's nothing left, but a sight which belongs in a B rated end-of-the-world movie.

The street leading out of the town, which was a hellhole long before the-me-that-was-an-angel got a hold of Detroit, is torn up. Small, but sharp edged stones are cutting my bare feet, yet I go on. I have no other choice. The dead civilisation behind me is worse than everything, which could wait in the world outside of the-me-that-was—an-angel's stronghold named Detroit.

Smoke clouds the red horizon. I need little more a gaze in order to conclude that I better not try to see if the sky really is painted red or if it's just my own changed perception of the world. Step by step I walk forwards, leaving a ruined city behind me. Some cars are still burning at the side of the road; some buildings will never stop smoking, and some screams of dying souls will never cease to ring in my ears. In front of my eyes, an image flashes: the body of my once-human brother dying under my feet. The angel part of me was laughing, mocking him for being so weak and trying to save _Sammy_ … Sammy is long gone.

In this the angel-me was right, as usual. We spend a lot of time arguing and even more time trying to prove each other wrong. On most subjects, we find a compromise, even if it was mostly a shaky agree-to-disagree peace treaty. Most except for one.

_Humans__are__cruel__,_ the angel-me stated one day, when he was standing on an abandoned skyscraper, while looked down on the few remaining survivors of a resistance group.

Usually the angel-me ignored humans, who were unaware. Entire nations lived in peace, without giving any sign that they know the hell and heaven's raging war. One could pass around a corner of a street and discover another reality behind it, since in the limited perception of humanity passed the fall outs of the apocalypse as gang wars, global warming and terrorist attacks. But on this day, he amused himself with the remnant of another life.

Sam Winchester's life, he told me, when he waited for my once-human brother to come for him.

We both knew my once-human brother never had a chance, but the angel-me wanted to prove that humans were cruel. That they became cold and uncaring, when they gave up hope. I knew it and I believed it, but seeing proof was shattering. I agree with my angel-me that my once-human brother should have filled his empty shell with of the fire angel's grace Michael's. So cold, so despairing … my once-human brother is dead; it was a mercy. But he used his companions-in-arms; those who had sworn to protect his wings in battle he let run into a painful death.

Abandoned to be a meal for mere beasts.

My poor brother, guardian of Thursday and angel who raised the righteous man from hell, I weep for thee.

The angel-me cried this into the Heaven's and proved to the creator his point. He shouted that the righteous man hadn't been able to be faithful until the last point; sacrificing those he named friends and followers in vain.

My own tears are still burning down my cheeks. I cannot say if I am crying for my once human brother, who is dead, or for the angel-me, who is gone. The angel me left, he left, left, left … left for the Heaven's to be greeted by Michael, his Fire angel.

I saw.

I believed.

I cried.

When the angel-me, who's the new morning, left me - his mortal shell - I opened my mouth and eyes to free the light of the creator's brightest angel so that he could return to his beloved's side. I saw wings being carefully wrapped around cold grace. The fire angel greeted his brother, his wing mate.

I sould be happy and content, seeing this reunion. It is something of a divine miracle, yet I am being left behind. The angel-me always told me I was important to him. I was his mortal shell, his vessel and his conscience. But for the Heavens, he doesn't need me; I was so lost in his grace that I lost everything in return.

In another life, I would have returned to my human brother, but my human brother is dead now. His actions ended the apocalypse, but not in the way it was told to him. This has always been about brothers, but not about the relationship we once shared. We cut the connection when I embraced the angel-me and my human brother stopped feeling emotions. Our brotherhood is now lost; I gave up my own brother to help the angel the world named "Devil", and I have yet come to regret it.

While I slowly walk out of the town, away from the ruined city thatwill burn forever with the devil's heavenly fire - at least in my mind - the sun rises slowly. I can see her deep, blood-red shimmer that completes the sky in his colour. My angel-me had laughed when he turned the sky crimson; he said it fit the human nature as well as the fight he had with his fire-angel brother. The sky should resemble the pain he felt in the pit, the pain his fire-angel brother had to endure in an empty Heaven and his bloodstained grace.

Back than it felt good, oh so good. I wanted the world to see, half in spite and half in joy, what was my angel-me truly was. They hated and cursed him, locked him away, and it was my hands that tore the blackened souls apart they had long forsaken until their begging the creator for mercy. I never truly believed, believed in my angel-me until he did in fact grant the mercy for which the blackened souls asked.

Sin and redemption, I saw both and I witnessed both. Yet I still do not completely understand.

Have I sinned? I ask myself.

My angel-me left me behind, left me on mortal shores and everything reminds me of it. Am I not worthy to go to Heaven? Do I have to repent? I wish I knew for what. Especially since I committed various mistakes, when the angel-me was not yet a part of me yet. Considering how I've killed even after the angel-me took my body as his home, I could be even judged as evil. I let the morning shed new light on an old world. I did not stop him, when his hands - my hands - tore powers apart and spilled enough human blood to fill an ocean.

Perhaps this is the reason the sky is red and no longer blue. The blood of the world couldn't be contained, and so by it bled into the sky.

I make my way out of Detroit, far away from the symbol of corruption on earth. It needed to be torn down. Lucifer was the tool for that: the angel-me's anger, his loneliness and his pain drove him to that. But he knew and he did because he believed there would be a right after the wrong was destroyed.

Now I wander farther down the streets, down these broken boulevards towards something true. I aim for a forest, for nature to reveal to me what I must do now. The angel-me has left, left me behind, but I cannot lie down and simply die; I even can. I have not seen Death in years, he holds now claim over the Arches: partly because the Creator loves them too much, partly because the Arches are help Death with his work. I've seen Death tore out corrupted and old seeds out of the earth, threw former believes down the pit and asked the fires of purgatory to burn brightly in order to Life raise from the ashes.

I have seen it all. I pity all those who tried to prevent the new morning from rising. This is a new dawn, and the darkest hour is before sunrise, but the angel-me has shown me all souls who didn't deserve to die early or life in a miserable life like this are resting in heaven now. It eased my conscience greatly, and yet I am not sure what I am supposed to do now. The city disappears behind the hills together with the light it sheds. It is still burning and, in a way, it will always burn. In my memory, it will always be a symbol of what happened, what I survived and what I learnt.

Yet I am still standing here, my bare feet bleeding into the cold grass of the evening at the edge of a forest. It is dark and inviting - it must have called me here, for I have no sense of how much time has passed.

I also do not know what will happen if I enter it. I am aware of my state and that the angel-me has not whipped out all dangers of the world; not even he can do that. The point was destroying the world for a rebirth, not annihilating it. But when I look at the burning city, which is still huge in my mind no matter how far and fast I walked away from it, I know my destination lies in the other direction. Down in the dark forest, which offers me rest and comfort.

The trees are opening a path for me now: they move and the fog lifts a little, just for me.

I tear myself away form the city, which has been my home for an era, but the angel-me deserves to have his wings finally groomed by his fire angel after millennia of flying alone. I try to now to feel the raw ache of his absence; the angel-me me was too overjoyed when the fire angel laid down his blade and opened his sun wings again for him, who he once exchanged an entire pair of wings. The highest honour and greatest declaration of love one can give to an angel. Even the Creator has to come second in it, since He has no wings to give. But, so the angel-me told me, it was the reason why faith and trust was important, a lesson the morning star admitted to have forgotten: why the creation of humanity had darkened his mind.

Dark like the forest I now wander in. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see shadows following me, shades who are watching, but not cornering me yet.

What do they see, I wonder?

Behind the trees I hear movement, claws digging into the ground and causing fallen leaves to rustle slightly. There is a deep suspicion in my mind, and out of habit I call upon fire to brighten the woods a little. It is not so much a torch, that I ignite to see, but rather an expansion of my own shining soul to reveal, what hides in the darkness of this forest. There is no hunger in the air - the shades do not wish to consume me; they are merely curious.

They sniffle and one of them breaches out of the darkness intp the light I shed. I am perplexed for a moment, when the shade turns and twists its form a little to reveal a wolf. It should not be here; there are no wolves in these parts of the country, but it may as well be me, who is not native to this soil anymore. The wolf in his behaviour seems more at home in the forest he just left to greet to me. Again I see no aggression in his bright, intelligent eyes. If I had to place a wager I would say he would be able to rip me apart easily; his dark, shining fur does not hide the strength of his body.

But he does not wish to harm me. He places his steps carefully so as to not startle me. His pack mates would let me leave if I wish, simply because he orders it, but what good would that do me? I have no home and while I flinch away from killing corrupted and testing brave souls, I wish to see something other than red blood being spilled.

The great wolf circles around me, buries his nose in my torn jeans and nudges me in a specific direction. I follow since I have little else to do and the angel-me's actions are beginning to show their toll on my body. I felt no hunger, no pain and desire for rest in long time, but the angel-me is gone now. While I had been dancing on the edge of being human before I invited an undying graceful existence in my body, I am certainly not human now. I learnt much from he who the world called Lucifer, it was my hands that did the work, even if it was the angel-me's will guided them.

Not to mention he burned out the dark blood inside of me. My veins are still singed from the grace that burned out the demon blood, a pain I suppressed but still absently am aware of. One day, so I've no doubt the pain will return. It might kill me, will blow apart the rest of my identity.

Sam Winchester is hardly alive anymore; he died when I accepted embraced Lucifer and accepted him as my other self - an older self, as a parent of sorts. I do not regret this decision, but it does leave me helpless against outer forces now. Perhaps the wolf and his pack mates, sense this as they lead me through the forest now, on paths, which I never could have tread without their permission, are sensing this perhaps. I would not mind to fading away here. Whatever will be left of me, could become a part of this forest; the blood I leave behind – my feet and my hands will not stop bleeding; they never do – will nurture the earth, will give back what I have taken from others.

I do not regret the killing, not anymore.

My human brother is in heaven now, with the angel who followed him until the end. Perhaps will meet again someday, if I am able to regain enough of a soul to be reborn. Otherwise I will have to wait until he comes to me. One way or the other, I smile when I think about the years we had together. We were brothers for a lifetime of battle, and I would be honoured to be born into his line again. Yet I know, I wouldn't be necessary. He has spilled enough blood with me on the hunts in order for me to forever claim him as my brother, no matter in which form and time he returns. At least this was once custom, to consider these your brothers, who fought at your side and spilled blood with you.

Tiredness finally claims my thoughts. They start to swim and my vision blurs in front of me. I simply follow the wolf with the rest of my senses, but these as well are starting to fail me. It seems I have had enough for now. The shades and the great wolf are pressing on, I hear them telling me it is not far now, but I wonder of the destination is worth the effort I've put up in order not to tumble and fall asleep, where I land.

Just, when I am seriously considering it, I sense light.

I can taste it on my tongue, which tasted nothing in the last years but blood and ashes. Angels do not eat; they consume the purpose they were created for and leave behind the work they have done.

I can see it with my tired eyes, which can barely discern light from darkness anymore. All in front of me is mostly grey, but for a few soft colours in the distance I forgot for years.

I can hear it with ears, which I have become used to the screams and pleadings of people and the blazing of burning fire.

I can feel the light on my skin, warming me from the outside rather from within. It is like am embrace, a sensation I have forgotten and it is enough to let me fall on my knees. I think it is finally too much, but I lift my head to at least gaze upon the being that will deliver me from the pain I can no longer feel.

Possibly the light I sense will banish the numbness of my body and my mind, which is even harder to bear than the pain. Warm hands touch my face; the light is so close that I could swallow it. Tears stream down my cheeks, since I know not how else to comprehend what is happening to me. I try to reach out for the hands, which are holding me upright, which feel so welcoming and forgiving and with a great effort, I finally manage to grasp the wrist of the entity they call The Messenger.

Faintly I remember how he looked, when I last saw him, his snarky self compressed in an impossible small body, when he was trying to teach me a necessary lesson. Not all of those I got; it would be arrogant to assume I valued even a fraction of the message he was trying to deliver. But I hope I grasped enough to be granted forgiveness.

"Please," I try to say, my voice hoarse, dry after years disuse and my reliance on telepathy.

"Please, I want…" I beg. I know it is begging, but I am tired, worn out and have reached the end of all I am able to give.

I wish for just one thing: for the ache inside of me to disappear.

But I cannot say with what I wish the ache to be eased and the emptiness to be filled _with_ …

"Yes." The Messenger grants me this with heavenly authority and pulls me closer to him until I can bury my face in his chest.

He smells of fresh spring water, clarity only dusk can bring and hope at the darkest hour.

"Yes," Gabriel repeats with an absolute certainty that overloads all my senses and fills my presence with everything that is him.

"You shall have what your soul desires."

_**End of Part One**_


End file.
